‘You like dogs, J.J.?’
‘I guess. I mean, I never had a dog.’
‘People are either dog people or cat people, don’t you think?’
Clive was watching from the kitchen; I had the sudden distinct feeling that the question was some sort of test, or personality assessment. Which was I—dog or cat?
‘Clive is a cat person,’ she said, and blew a languid smoke-ring in his direction.
‘I admire cats,’ he said. He slopped a glistening mass of spaghetti into a colander to drain. ‘I admire their sense of purpose. Their detachment.’
Stella chuckled, throatily. It was another routine, I saw. He was talking about himself; half mockery, half an affirmation of the thing it mocked.
‘Dogs are a good character test for people,’ she said. ‘Dogs see the inner person. People reveal their true selves in their attitude to dogs.’
‘Here, boy,’ I said to Binky, and bent and rubbed his ears affectionately. ‘Good boy.’
Stella laughed, then added, ‘She’s a girl.’
She poked another crust beneath the table. I asked: ‘The dogs are vegetarian?’
‘Of course.’
‘But that’s unnatural. Dogs are carnivores.’
She shook her head. ‘Omnivores, like us. Eat anything.’
‘Have you always been vegetarian?’
‘The endpoint of a long journey,’ Clive said from the kitchen.
He carefully carried in a huge dish heaped with the steaming spaghetti, then a second dish filled with a thick red sauce.
‘With Clive vegetarianism is an intellectual duty,’ Stella said. ‘With me it’s pure pleasure.’
He ladled out the sauce: chunks of onion and tomato and red and green peppers. It seemed the most delicious food I’d ever eaten. The dogs, staring up from their supine positions, drooled, open-mouthed.
‘He converted you?’ I asked.
She shook her head: ‘It kind of crept up on me.’
She ground fresh pepper over her bowl, pondering. ‘I always ordered vegetarian meals when I flew. Or sometimes Halal food. Kosher food. It didn’t matter. The point was to order something personalised, something made with care. Anything except the standard plastic airline shit. I guess I found it was the same with cooking vegetarian at home. You have to work a little harder at it. There’s more love in it.’
‘So the pleasure came first—then the theory?’
‘What theory?’
She laughed, and glanced teasingly at Clive. He seemed to enjoy her irreverence; perhaps he sensed that he needed it.
‘This is delicious,’ I told him.
‘Stella’s recipe,’ he murmured.
She sucked several loose strands of spaghetti into her mouth with noisy relish: ‘When I first met Clive his idea of a vegetarian meal was birdseed and mineral water. It was a penance for him.’
He managed another small, tickled smile.
‘Clive’s not big on pleasure,’ she said.
‘I like it in theory, my dear,’ he said, his first joke for the night.
He turned towards me, scrutinising me. I sensed that I was still undergoing an audition, that he was measuring my responses.
‘We detested each other when we first met,’ Stella was saying. ‘Chalk and cheese.’
‘She thought me an old fuddy-duddy,’ he murmured.
She leant over and rubbed the back of his neck, fondly: ‘You are an old fuddy-duddy!’
‘And I thought her a troublemaker—an opinion not entirely undeserved.’
She took mock umbrage at this: ‘Who is the troublemaker?’ She turned again to me: ‘Let me tell you about His Holiness here…You know he banned animals from his Zoology Department?’
I shook my head, amused.
‘Did the excreta hit the fan! I mean, you can ban animals from a Physics Department. You can ban animals from a French Department…But Zoology? The University shifted him sideways. A so-called Personal Chair.’
Clive said, mildly: ‘It means you have no power.’
He rose and methodically cleared the table, stacking the two empty pasta bowls, with the third—his own, largely untouched—on top. He uncorked another bottle of red wine, and brought out a plate of assembled cheeses: blue-moulds, smoked-browns, a single large wedge of camembert.
‘You eat dairy products?’
‘Hand milked,’ he said.
Stella cut a sloppy slice of camembert, shovelled it onto a cracker, took a bite, pursing her big mouth appreciatively.
‘Nice cheese,’ she said. ‘Very cunty.’
I didn’t know where to look. Clive remained unfazed as she reached below the table and distributed a handful of crackers. He worshipped her: she could do no wrong. My earlier hunch that he liked a little unpredictability, a little extra colour, in his life seemed confirmed. Conversation moved on; more of their life together, their shared beliefs. They argued, continuously, playfully—not so much over those beliefs, as over how to arrive at those beliefs: which route to take to an agreed destination. Clive argued from the point of view of ‘the cosmos’: a place in which all sentient creatures had certain rights. The avoidance of pain was his key premise; on this foundation all else was constructed. There was no appeal to a higher authority than human reason, certainly no vestige of his religious training was in evidence. His body might be ageing but his mind was razor-sharp, as youthful as the wig that warmed it. Stella wasn’t much interested in theoretical foundations for notions of right and wrong; she knew. We all know, she argued. The evil know in their hearts they are evil, given time to think.
‘I take that as given. I’m interested in how, not why. Effects, not causes.’
She was still smoking steadily, her conversation, increasingly, could be seen as well as heard: each syllable emerging from her mouth, surrounded by a puff of smoke, like a talk-balloon.
‘Stella is the ultimate pragmatist,’ her husband said, not without pride.
‘To know and not to act,’ she said to him, ‘is not yet to know.’ She turned to me, and added, with disarming self-mockery: ‘Confucius say.’
I listened, mesmerised. It was the most fascinating discussion I’d heard, or seen, in years; it raged back and forth, both sides appealing to me from time to time for agreement, or for adjudication. I felt in need of a referee’s whistle, although I would have been far too indecisive to use it. I agreed with whoever was speaking at the time. Then was won over by the opposite argument a few seconds later. I had longed for years to take part in discussions such as these. I listened avidly, excitedly—too excitedly, perhaps. I was also drinking far too much; around midnight my wineglass slipped from my fingers and smashed on the tabletop. The dark wine spread through the white cloth as if through blotting paper.
‘I’m sorry, how stupid. I’ll get a sponge.’
‘Leave it,’ Stella said, airily.
‘No, I’ll mop it up. Sprinkle some salt.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said.
She reached out and deliberately knocked over her own glass. A second, larger redness bloomed in the linen cloth.
Clive was less interested in the spilled wine than in my reaction to his wife’s act of weird generosity.
Embarrassed, I fossicked in my pocket for my car keys. ‘Perhaps it’s time I left.’
Clive, who had drunk nothing but soda and bitters all night, insisted that I shouldn’t drive home. ‘Take a cab, J.J.’
‘From here?’
‘It’s less expensive than a funeral.’
Stella restored her intact wineglass to the vertical, and refilled it.
‘I’ll drive you home,’ she announced.
‘I couldn’t allow that, my dear,’ Clive said, as mildly as ever. ‘You’ve drunk more than J.J.’ He held out his open hand, palm up: ‘Keys please, J.J.’
I handed them over; this old brown mouse of a man had a presence, an authority, that could not be denied. He rose, and walked to the phone on the kitchen bench. Stella leant acros
s the table and whispered, with drunken sarcasm: ‘Thou shalt always act responsibly. Thou shalt always lead a rational life.’
Clive murmured into the phone then replaced the receiver. ‘Twenty minutes,’ he told me.
‘What is the sign for drunk?’ Stella asked.
I demonstrated: two wobbly fingers, stepping unsteadily across a Flat Hand.
‘I love it,’ she said, laughing. ‘Shit, I love this language.’
Clive stood at the bookshelves, head tilted, searching for a title. Stella pressed on, drunkenly enthusiastic. ‘What I love most about it—it’s so true. So natural. You couldn’t tell lies in Sign.’
‘Of course you can tell lies,’ I said. ‘Some would say that’s what makes it a language.’
Clive tugged, with difficulty, a book from the tightly squeezed pack.
‘You might like to borrow this, J.J. Much of the ground we’ve covered tonight is amplified here.’
He slid the book across the table: The Rights of Animal, a familiar black hymn book. I slid it back.
‘I have a library copy.’
Stella, incredulous, said: ‘When did you borrow it—this morning?’
My face betrayed me; she laughed loudly, a gotcha-laugh: ‘You did!’
Clive managed a smile: ‘I’m flattered.’
He hammered the black book back into the tight-packed shelf with the flat of his hand, briefly scanned a lower shelf, and eased out another, thinner book.
‘I doubt very much that you have got a copy of this.’
‘Everyone’s got a copy of that,’ Stella said.
‘Take it,’ he urged. ‘Stella’s animal poems are very…insightful.’
‘It’s not compulsory, J.J.’ she said.
I took the book, a stapled booklet of her poems. Selected Friends.
‘I set this book on the Zoology I syllabus,’ Clive said.
‘A book of poems?’
‘One of the last executive acts I was permitted. And probably the last straw. But a book like this, for all its faults…’
‘What faults?’
He smiled, semi-apologetically, at his wife’s interjection: ‘. . . for all their faults these poems show science how far it has to go. One of the main reasons I fell out with my colleagues, J.J.—I came to see that the study of animal perception, of animal consciousness, was being completely ignored. We could dissect our millionth Sprague-Dawley rat and still have no idea what that rat thought about it all.’
I waved the book: ‘This will tell me?’
I was joking; he wasn’t. ‘It’s the nearest you’ll get in English.’
‘What he means,’ Stella said, her huskiness increasingly slurred, ‘is that the book was written by a rat!’
The intercom buzzer drowned her loud laughter; Clive rose and spoke into a wall-panel microphone. ‘Coming.’
I heaved myself to my feet; Clive ushered me towards the front door. Stella followed; her three dogs, too torpid to move, remained beneath the table like beached seals. Clive lifted a torch that was hanging from a nail on the verandah post; we followed a wavering path of light through the trees to the first gate.
A taxi waited, engine grumbling, across the open field beyond the second gate; various pairs of eyes—red, yellow—glowed back as Clive played the beam of his torch across the darkness. The night was moonless, black as pitch; there seemed little point in a Sign farewell.
‘A wonderful night,’ I said aloud. ‘Thank you. Both of you.’
The cabbie, a giant of a man, leant across and opened the passenger door. I eased myself carefully in.
‘Where to, squire?’
‘Glenelg.’
‘You win the lottery?’
I opened Stella’s small slim book, and read, hunched forward, by the light of the dash, as the cabbie navigated the dirt road. Her selected friends all seemed to be animals; each poem was about a different animal, as if written by an animal—an attempt to get inside that animal, to see the world through animal eyes.
I read through the first poem, Dog. I didn’t understand a word, but the wacky syntax intrigued me. It seemed very . . . Stella. The wine had dissolved my normal reserve; I read the poem through again, this time aloud, trying to make sense of it. And slowly, like solving a puzzle, or cracking a code, it came to me. I got it—some of it.
Outside calls me every Sun:
new Sniffs out there, tangled Sniffs
I’ve never sniffed before.
Sun makes all Sniffs loud
until Sun hides and then there’s Wet.
I hate all Wet: small hits of Wet
that fall from High, long ropes
of Wet that come from dry ropes
in the Green. Shake off Wet
and run inside, I sniff the Sniff
of Two Legs opening White Door:
the Cold Kennel where Meat lives.
I looked up; the cabbie was glancing at me nervously. His head brushed the roof, his huge belly was wedged hard against the steering wheel. I warmed to him: one of the Brothers, another fatty who liked to drive, combining work and pleasure.
‘What do you think?’ I said.
‘What is it—a kid’s story?’
‘A poem.’
‘Never had much time for poetry.’
‘A friend of mine wrote it.’
‘You can tell him I like the line about the cold, white kennel.’
‘Her.’
‘Tell her. Yeah, I like that. The kennel where meat lives. I’m a bit partial to the cold white kennel myself.’ He glanced my way, appreciatively: ‘You look like you might be of the same tendency.’
Fat Pride. We’re not embarrassed among ourselves.
‘Mind if I smoke?’ he said.
I shook my head, willing to forgive him anything. With one hand he shook a cigarette from a packet on the dash, with the other he pulled the dash lighter from its plug-hole; meanwhile he steered the cab easily through a corner with a slight sideways movement of his belly pressed against the wheel.
‘Power-steering,’ he said.
He was showing off, one Brother to another; a kind of belly-dancing.
‘Like one?’
I shook my head again; I was more than happy to sit back and admire the skill of his belly for the rest of the trip.
My mother was waiting up, sitting at the kitchen table, fidgeting. A fresh pot of tea brewed in a knitted cosy; tea-leaves emptied from the previous pot still faintly steamed in the sink.
The garbage bags I had packed with animal products earlier in the evening stood on the table, ripped open, emptied. The tinned animal flesh had apparently been restored to the larder; the items of woollen and silken clothing were stacked neatly on the bench.
‘Why?’ she signed, puzzled. ‘We thought…burglar.’
The carnivorous burglar. I kissed the apex of her head from behind, rested my elbows lightly on her shoulders, and signed in front of her face, a few inches from her nose.
‘You read note?’ I signed, using the compass points of her body instead of mine as part of the signing, a kind of ventriloquism.
‘Yes. But understand not.’
‘Animal Freedom,’ I explained.
She turned to face me: ‘You alright?’
‘Wonderful,’ I signed, hamming up the pronunciation, but only a little. It was how I felt.
She paused, searching for something to say, or wanting to keep me there a little longer for interrogation, or rebuke: ‘You where tonight?’
‘Dinner with friends.’
A hint of pleasure softened the worry-lines—relieved-mother pleasure: ‘Which friends?’
‘Famous friends,’ I signed: literally ‘know-everywhere friends’.
The Rights of Animal still sat unopened on the table, black as a bible; I reached across and flipped it over. Clive’s younger face peered up from the back cover, meditative, calm.
My mother pointed; I nodded. Her worry-lines tightened again; her hands began to fidget, became still, twit
ched again, then stilled themselves again. Something was on the tips of her fingers—what was it? A warning?
‘Worry-not,’ I signed, planted another kiss on the summit of her head, then scooped up the book and headed for bed.
I read for a time, but without concentration—unable to scan more than a few sentences without the faces and voices of my new friends interrupting, inserting themselves into my train of thought. Wine had addled my brain, certainly, but excitement also provided its share of distraction. The evening’s conversations replayed themselves again and again, as if on some continuous spool. Exciting conversations, to me—conversations about things that mattered, important ideas. My friends in the past, apart from a few gifted students, had been Jill’s friends; work colleagues mostly, their talk had been shoptalk, or academic gossip that meant little to me, an outsider.
I reached for Stella’s book of poems; her smaller, bite-size pieces of writing, not requiring extended concentration, seemed better suited to my limited concentration span. I read several through again, aloud, enjoying the feel of seeing the world through different eyes: slitted cat-eyes, wide owl-eyes, eyes with transparent lizard-lids.
A small game to pass the time: I covered the title of each poem with my hand as soon as I turned the page, and tried to guess the animal from the contents—tried to feel myself that animal.
You with Feet keep clear from me;
I hear You coming thumping.
The earth’s my ear, my tight-stretched
Drum, I hear you, Big Feet, Club Feet, beating
Through the grass: two big bass drums,
ten small side-drums. Up, the view is
wrong; Down, the air is cool,
the view is wide enough. Enough:
Stay clear, you, You; I have two
Sharps; I like the taste of heel and toe.
Finally I slept, drifting drunkenly in and out of wakefulness through the night. I was time-travelling, jerkily. I opened my eyes; the digits glowing on my alarm-clock had jumped forward an hour. My lids closed, and opened again: another hour.
I could hear the sound of the waves outside my window: a soft, steady concussion; the sea massaging the shore. A cool, refreshing sound; a beckoning sound—but for once I was too weary, or merely too drunk, to respond.
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